Finally, if one asks whether the Achaeans practised a collective and hereditary vendetta, we may reply that the nature of the Achaean system of life, their consciousness of the paucity of their numbers in the midst of potentially hostile people, would have hindered any tendency to such a practice within the Achaean caste. An insult inflicted from without provoked, of course, the most savage retaliation. ‘Frightfulness,’ no less than military skill and strategic control, was one of the pillars of the Achaean fabric of power. But we have seen how Athene interfered to prevent the Achaean feud in the realm of Odysseus; in this rôle of peace-maker she may be regarded as a symbol of the restraining influence of military discipline and group-consciousness amongst the Achaeans. From certain passages in Homer,[78] in which there appears a kind of proverb, namely that a man is lucky to have a son or brother to avenge his fall, we may conclude that the danger of collective hypervengeance occurring amongst the Achaeans was much less probable than the danger of not being avenged at all. Similarly, in the _Odyssey_[79] we are told that an Achaean murderer had no fear that vengeance would fall upon his children. Thus, it is only in post-Homeric times, we think, that the Greeks lapsed into savagery and practised on a large scale a collective and hereditary vendetta. This will be still more manifest when we come to give an account of the Hesiodic society. From such a state of chaos the Greeks were saved by the seventh-century Apolline doctrine of pollution, which we shall describe in our Second Book, and also by the evolution of democratic civic government. When the State assumed responsibility for the trial and execution of criminals, including murderers, the lust of vengeance was gradually subdued. But all the more must we admire the comparative absence of collective and hereditary vendetta in the Homeric epoch, when, for Achaeans as well as for Pelasgians, the execution of vengeance devolved upon the relatives of the slain. FOOTNOTES [1] _H. and H._ pp. 251-253. [2] _Supra_, chap. ii. pp. 21-6. [3] _Supra_, p. 27. [4] xv. 224, 273-278. [5] _Supra_, p. 21. [6] μέγα δὲ κρατέουσιν Ἀχαιῶν. [7] 273. [8] _Supra_, p. 21. [9] From the translation by Butcher and Lang. [10] See _Eumenides_, p. 109. [11] xvi. 511. [12] Leaf, _H. and H._ p. 254. [13] P. 253. [14] _Il._ xvi. 570. [15] xiii. 696; xv. 336. [16] _Il._ xxiii. 88. [17] _Op. cit._ pp. 125, 128, 135, 254. [18] _Il._ xv. 430 ff. [19] _H. and H._ pp. 254-5. [20] xiv. 380. [21] _Od._ xiii. 258. [22] See Seebohm, pp. 129-130. [23] See _supra_, p. 9; Seebohm, pp. 109, 356. [24] _Il._ ix. 450-480. [25] 458-461. [26] See Monro’s _Iliad_, vol. i. p. 349. [27] Pp. 43, 44. [28] P. 44. [29] _Hippolytus_, 890 ff. [30] _Ib._ 970 ff. [31] 460. [32] 463. [33] 465. [34] _Supra_, pp. 9, 47 f. [35] xiv. 484. [36] _Od._ xi. 410-23. [37] _Od._ iii. 310; _infra_, p. 72 ff. [38] P. 45.